Colonel Kenwynton, now at his home on his plantation on the bayou, also gazed with starting eyes and dumfounded amazement at the excerpt from the legal proceedings, within his own knowledge so palpably false. He read it aloud under the kerosene lamp to Hugh Treherne on the other side of the old-fashioned marble-topped center table.
“What do you think of that, sir?” and the Colonel gave the newspaper a resounding blow.
Treherne smiled significantly.
“I am impressed all the time, Colonel, with the insanity of the people outside the asylum in comparison with the patients under treatment.”
“Good God, sir,” cried the Colonel in great excitement, “this is a shotgun business, and Floyd-Rosney is the man of all others to brazen it out on a plea of the ‘unwritten law.’ He will shoot one or the other of the Ducies on sight, and they are as much alike as two black-eyed peas,—they really ought to wear wigs,—he is as likely to pot one as the other. And the poor lady! My heart bleeds for her. I must clear this matter up,” concluded the all-powerful. “I will send a communication to the newspapers.”
Now Colonel Kenwynton had, in his own opinion, the pen of a ready writer. It was not his habit to mince phrases or to revise. He wrote a swift, legible hand, for he was a relic of an age when gentlemen prided themselves on an elegant penmanship, in the days when the typewriter was not. He had no sort of fear of offending Floyd-Rosney, nor care for wounding his feelings. He recited in great detail the facts of Mrs. Floyd-Rosney’s entrance into the Adelantado Hotel, her disclosure of her husband’s desire that she should tour the Orient with the Hardingtons, who had already acquainted the writer that she was to be of their party, and her grief because of her separation from her child, who had been secretly removed from her home as a preparation for her departure. Now and then the Colonel cast his eyes upward for inspiration and waved his pen at arm’s length.
“Not too much hot shot, Colonel,” remonstrated Hugh Treherne, a little uneasy at these demonstrations.
“Attend to your own guns, sir,” retorted the Colonel.
With no regard for the awkwardness of the incident, he stated that the poor lady, although the wife of a millionaire, had not command of ten dollars in the world with which to defray the expenses of her journey to the home of her youth, and to her uncle who stood in the relation of a father to her, for his advice and protection against being shipped out of the country.
“It is my firm belief,” and the Colonel liked the words so well he read them aloud to his comrade, “that we do not live in Turkey, that the honored wives of our Southland do not occupy the position of inmates of a harem, and I could not regard Mrs. Floyd-Rosney as the favorite of a sultan. Therefore it afforded Mr. Adrian Ducie and me great pleasure to advance the money for her tickets to the home of her uncle, Major Majoribanks, and to see her on the train.” He explained, at great length, that the departure of the train was so imminent and immediate that Adrian Ducie bought tickets to the first station for himself and Colonel Kenwynton, in order that they might not be detained by any question at the gate, and, at the moment of boarding the cars, Mr. Floyd-Rosney, “hunting down the persecuted fugitive,” had mistaken Adrian Ducie for his brother, Randal Ducie, who at this moment was in New Orleans, making an address to the Mississippi River Association, giving them the benefit of his very enlightened views, which the whole country would do well to study and adopt, thereby saving many thousands of dollars to the cotton planters of the jeopardized delta.